Potty Trained Man

Kaleb hasn't had an accident in over three weeks, so I'm a happy mom. For a while there he would have an accident (pee pee) every other day or so and I would make him go in the bathtub and rub him down with cold water, thinking he would hate it and would learn to run to the potty, but this one time I knew I needed to change things after this conversation:

Me: Kaleb, you get a cold bath because you peed your pants (as I'm rinsing him off)

Kaleb: Thank you Mom, thank you. My go to time-out now?

I put him in time-out after and again he said, "thank you mom, thank you."

I was like, what!!!??? I tried not to laugh out loud, but I knew this bath idea and timeout was not working. I told Braydan and he said just turn on the shower. It sounded mean, but I tried it the next time he had an accident and he HATED IT!! Actually, hate is an understatement. He was trying to climb up the shower walls to get away from the freezing water, screaming the whole time :) I felt bad doing it, but he hasn't messed up since.

I've probably traumatized him for life against showers, now but all well. Amazingly, he's been waking up dry from his naps too! Nighttime he still has a pretty heavy diaper, but should I work on that yet, or wait till he wakes up dry?

One of his happier times in the bathroom :)

He said some funny things today and I actually remembered to write them down! This morning I said to him, "It's time to change your clothes." He responded, "No, I don't want to clothes my change!" He thought it was pretty hilarious after he said it.

I was quizzing him about his body parts and asked him where his heart was. He was like "Ummm?" I pointed to where it is and he said, "No Mom, it's right here in my beard!" (pointing to his chin)

And my favorite of the day . . . I was trying to get ketchup off his face and he tells me, "No Mom stop it! Just go to garage sales!"

Alisha, my awesome sista

Well I'm behind again! Ahhhhh! I feel like life just keeps getting busier and busier. Alisha left on the 25th and I've kinda been lost without her! She came for 10 days while Braydan went on their week-long scout trip. She was totally nice and didn't care about going and doing touristy things at all. She just wanted to help me catch up on everything. We got lots done! I was supposed to have my wisdom teeth out on the 18th, but ......long story short, I'm gonna wait till next year. I'm so tired of denists!

Here's some of what we got done instead of visiting denists and surgeons:

1. She organized my whole garage. It was a disaster before, but now it makes me so happy when I walk in. My favorite part of that afternoon was when the neighbor kids all came to help us sweep and scrub the floor. We had soap and water everywhere. Kaleb got a hold of the hose at one point and sprayed down all my food storage :(

2. She helped me get 2 dressers, one for kaleb, one for Eliza. I'm the one that needed a dresser, but we couldn't resist these two--one off craigslist and one from a garage sale. She also helped me buy a new (well, new to me) kitchen table and chairs! I found it on craigslist and they wanted $100 for it OBO. So, I debated for like a week and finally went and offered $50 for it! I think they were a little surprised, but they said $75, but when her husband wasn't looking, she said, "I'll take $65!" I was like sweet! I could just picture the table painted and re-finished in my head and I knew it would be a fun project. I'll post pictures when I'm done with it.

3. Went to Winco and stocked up on food storage! My pantry was seriously suffering before from hunger :)

4. Went to the childrens museum

5. Road bikes

6. Got the kids pictures done. I'll have to post them later when I pick them up!

7. Got a babysitter one night and went shopping. Oh man, we had fun that night! I'm the worst driver ever and ran over the cement blocks that you park in front of. That was like at 11:30 at night and we could not stop laughing about it :)

8. Watched movies

9. Went to the lake and spent $30 on Chinese food. We were hungry:)

10. Picked berries

11. Went to Seattle/Ballard to see the Locks

12. Played dinosuars with Kaleb

13. Took naps with Eliza

14. Did pedicures

15. Had many great talks about life

16. Went to garage sales, of course!

17. Potty trained Kaleb! *(more details about that to come)

I think that's all I can remember for now. Oh yeah, she washed my car too! And organized all our closets, drawers, pantry, etc. She really needs to start her own business! Anyways, thank you Alisha so much! You are the best sister ever. I love you and miss you!

Kids Say the Darndest Things

Sunday our Lebanese neighbors invited us over for a barbecue. Kaleb woke up from his nap really grumpy and wanted candy and I said no. We were kinda late, so Braydan and Kaleb left even though he was still crying about it. I came over with Eliza after I finished my dessert and here's what Kaleb told them in my absence:

Allen: Kaleb! What's wrong? Why are you so sad? Is Dad being mean?

Kaleb: No. (he thought for a while) Mom hit me.

Allen: Really!?

Then Braydan stepped in and saved me, but why does he have to embarrass me? The other day we were in the front yard and Maha, (the same neighbors) came over to talk to him. He looked up and asked her, "You have a baby boy in your tummy?"

She definitely didn't have a baby in her tummy and I almost wanted to melt into the grass in embarrassment. She said no and I quickly changed the subject!

She was also holding him the other day and she has a rather large mole on her cheek. Of course it was the first thing he pointed to: "You have an owie right there?"

I just wanted to grab him and tell him to leave her alone! She was really nice about it and explained birth marks to him. Little boys are sure curious! And have big mouths!

Longest Week Of My Life

Last week I devoted myself to potty training Kaleb. Oh man, it was a hard, long week! I promised myself that we'd stay home and never go anywhere and that's what we did. I was excited at first, and even when he didn't care about picking out new underwear, I still thought he'd want to when we got home. Nope. It took Sheraden and I both holding him down to get them on and then he threw the biggest tantrum ever! It was pretty funny. Here's video to prove it:

The first day I tried to stay outside as much as possible. I think we stayed in the backyard for 2 hours the first morning and of course he never went when we were out there! He got in trouble for poking Eliza so I put him in time-out in his usual corner in the house and THEN he peed all over my floor! For his first nap I left his underwear on just to see what would happen and . . . . . duh....of course he was soaked when he woke up :) Whoops.

You're probably thinking I'm gonna fail at this whole thing by the way I started, but it got better as the week went on! I started with taking him every 30 minutes, but quickly discovered that was too long, so moved it to every 15 minutes. He never had another accident on the carpet, but the kitchen got it's share :) I gave up with underwear after the first day and let him go half naked. It seems he could understand he didn't have a diaper on better when I did that. When I'd try to take him potty before the timer beeped, he'd say "No Mommy!! The timer not go off yet!" (Then I'd sneakily go move the time up to one minute! :)

One of the few modest pictures I have of him potty training. He's pretending to be a baby like Eliza. He likes to do that a lot (I think for the attention)

Toward the end of the week when I took him every 3o minutes, he'd have nothing. So I thought, okay time to move it to 45 min. That seemed to work with no accidents so I moved it to an hour and today I never set a timer! I was nervous about it, but we were in the garage working and suddenly he looked up at me really worried and said I have to go potty!!! I thought it was probably too late by then, but i picked him up and he was still dry so we hurried to the bathroom and he made it! Success! That gave me confidence to take him to the library and he had no accidents. I showed him the bathroom there and asked if he had to go, but he held it till he got home!

Luckily I never had to worry about the pooping part. He's had that down for a long time now because I made him go after lunch every day. Oh, another thing I did to motivate him is take his firetruck away if he didn't stay dry. I put it on top of the fridge so he can always see it and remind him he can have it back if he goes potty. I also gave him skittles when he remembered to ask for a treat.


My favorite thing that he says every time he's done and I'm pulling up his underwear is,
"Mom, don't snap me!" It took me a minute at first to figure out what he meant, but I guess I was pulling a little too much on the elastic of his underwear and snapped his you-know-what. So that's the counsel I get after every time I take him! A word of advice from kaleb: "DON'T SNAP YOUR PEEPEE!"

I know we're not done training yet, but so far so good. I hope it sticks! One thing I thought interesting that I need to remember is that how happy my kids were staying home all week! Sometimes i try and do too much and end up wearing us all out. It's fun to go places, but we don't need to all the time.

Eliza's 6 Months

So my Eliza Sue is really closer to 7 months now, but all well.

A few weeks ago I got her a jumperoo off craigslist and she's sure funny in there. She was bored lying on the ground all the time, but still couldn't crawl so this was perfect to give my arms a break from holding her.

She learned to sit up a few weeks ago and loves to play by Kaleb and chew on his toys. It's hard to believe that Kaleb was already crawling and climbing on things at her age. I try and get her up on her knees but she won't have it. She's such a lady wanting to sit-up proper and play on the floor:)

Everyone that gets to know her remarks on what a happy baby she is. At her 6 month check up she weighed 16lbs 9oz. She's was taking a bottle every night before bed, but now she's done with that. Maybe it means my body is finally back to normal and I can give her enough? Whatever the case, I'm glad cause formula was expensive! It was fun to watch Braydan feed her. He loved getting to do that.